Daily Content Archive
(as of Tuesday, July 3, 2018)| Word of the Day | |||||||
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soul-searching
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| Daily Grammar Lesson | |
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ConjugationConjugation refers to the way we inflect (change the form of) verbs to create particular meanings. What is grammatical tense? More... | |
| Article of the Day | |
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 MayaIn Hinduism, Maya is recognized as a powerful force that creates the cosmic illusion that the phenomenal world is real. Seeing through the illusion is seen as a path to liberating the soul. Originally, the word was used to refer to the wizardry with which a god can make humans believe in an illusion. Maya is also the name of the Hindu goddess of illusion, and because of this association, it is a common girl's name in India. What other religion regards the physical world as illusory and unreal? More... | |
| This Day in History | |
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 Quebec City Founded by Samuel de Champlain (1608)Frenchman Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec City as a trading post at the confluence of the St. Lawrence and St. Charles rivers. From this and subsequent settlements Catholic missionaries, explorers, and fur traders pushed across N America. Begun with just 32 colonists, the city is now home to about 500,000. Most residents are of French descent, despite the fact that the area was ceded to the British in 1763. Because many continental explorations began in the region, Quebec is known as what? More... | |
| Today's Birthday | |
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 Franz Kafka (1883)Despite the fact that he published only a few short works during his lifetime, Kafka is regarded as one of the most influential 20th-century writers. In prose remarkable for its clarity and precision, Kafka presents a world that is at once real and dreamlike and in which individuals burdened with guilt, isolation, and anxiety make a futile search for personal salvation. What virtually insurmountable difficulties do translators face when converting Kafka's works from German into English? More... | |
| Quotation of the Day | |
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 Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings.George Eliot (1819-1880) | |
| Idiom of the Day | |
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a (real) frog-choker— A particularly heavy or torrential downpour of rain. (Chiefly heard in the southern United States.) More... | |
| Today's Holiday | |
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 Dog Days (2022)The Dog Days are known as the hottest days of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, and usually occur in July and early August. In ancient times, the sultry weather in Rome during these months often made people sick, which they blamed on the fact that this was when Sirius, the Dog Star, rose at about the same time as the sun. There are many different ways of calculating which days in any given year are the dog days, but it is impossible to be precise; nowadays it is generally assumed that they fall between July 3 and August 11—slightly later than they occurred in ancient times. More... | |
| Word Trivia | |
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Today's topic: heelssparable - A headless nail used for soles and heels of shoes. More... recalcitrant - Comes from Latin recalcitrare, "kick out with the heels," from calx, "heel." More... heel - The crusty ends of a loaf of bread are its heels. More... Dog Star - Named for its appearing to follow at the heels of Orion the hunter. More... | |